Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Harbour Art #6


Well, almost 'harbour art'. This whale is on a garage door in Sumner and it always makes me smile :-)  I see it every time I visit the chocolate shop (Chocoblitz) at the far end of Nayland Street. I used to go there to buy chocolates for my Auntie Margaret and to chat to Kathy - who just lights up the shop on Sunday afternoons. Now I take eggs, chat to Kathy and Rebecca and buy chocolate hearts for Jai and Priya and chocolate fish for Niki! A brilliant shop. Worth visiting just to watch the young skateboarders who take forever to choose their chocs. This prompted a discussion last Sunday about our own childhoods and selecting sweets from the big glass jars in dairies. Remember gobstoppers?!!

5 comments:

  1. Seeing this painting is always a highlight of a trip out to Sumner, for me. Great sense of scale. There's a ridiculous grandeur about it, almost as if it were a reworking of a famous historical meeting -- Augustus Earle and 'the wounded chief Hongi', or somesuch. The person caught in the whale's teeth is like an emissary or a diplomat for whom negotiations have taken an unpleasant turn. Hope it doesn't get painted out anytime soon.

    ReplyDelete
  2. haha I have never seen this before. It's so good. Nearly as good as those chocolate fish of yours :o) Oh yes remember the gobstoppers, and the aching jaw.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ha! I always expect to find, on my next visit, that the little boat has been sucked into the abyss! The proportions please me in terms of the relative insignificance of the people. A nice antidote to Japanese (and other's) insistence on whaling.

    Niki, I offered a 'designer' chocolate fish (one of the Chocoblitz ones) to the first person at UC Education Plus who got a piece of writing to me. The guy who 'won' it said it was truly a 'designer' fish :-))

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hmmmm gobstoppers, I remember aniseed balls and sherbet dabs with particular pleasure. Five for a penny and saving up pennies and halfpennies. Simple treats - slow childhood - could it be a movement?

    ReplyDelete